Category: Discoveries and Rediscoveries

The Lister copperplates

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— from Anna Marie Roos, Ph.D. Research Fellow, Faculty of History

Martin Lister (1639-1712) was one of the more important doctors and virtuosi of his generation. He was a court physician to Queen Anne, vice-president of the Royal Society, wrote nineteen books, and was the first arachnologist and conchologist. His memoirs of his travels in Paris in 1697 were a bestseller, and he invented the histogram.

From 1685 to 1692, Lister compiled his masterwork– the Historiae Conchyliorum. This first comprehensive study of conchology consisted of over 1000 copperplates of shells and molluscs that he collected from around the world. Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, lent Lister species from his travels in Jamaica. Edward Lhwyd, the keeper of the Ashmolean, sent him live snails in strawberry baskets lined with damp moss. The 1140 pieces of Lister’s correspondence left to us show he was part of a global Republic of Letters of virtuosi who exchanged ideas and specimens. (I have calendared Lister’s correspondence and am editing it for publication with the Cultures of Knowledge Project at Oxford).

However, engraving such a large number of plates was no small or inexpensive feat, and it was one that Lister did not accomplish alone, employing his daughters as the primary draftswomen. By the time they were teenagers, Susanna and Anna Lister’s initials appeared on the title page of the Historiae.

In 1712, Lister willed the copperplates to the University of Oxford. In the mid-eighteenth century, William Huddesford, keeper of the Ashmolean, used the copperplates to create another edition of the Historiae Conchyliorum, but after that there wasn’t anything more in the published literature.

When I was writing my biography of Lister*, I assumed that the plates were lost. After all, Lister’s donation of specimens of natural history to the Ashmolean had disappeared with the vagaries of time. But then, through a friend of a friend, I was introduced to biologist Jeremy Woodley who mentioned that he had seen the plates in some “tea chests” at Oxford several decades ago. Lee Peachey at the University of Pennsylvania then confirmed that the plates still existed. But where were they? My heart thumping, I made frantic inquiries, particularly since my biography of Lister was about ready to go to press.

I wrote to the Rare Books section at the Bodleian Library , asking if they were there – and two days later, I saw them in person. There were the swirling curves of the bear paw clam, engraved by Anna Lister after a work of Wenceslaus Hollar that is now in the Queen’s Collection. There was the conus marmoreus, or marbled cone, which Anna copied from an engraving done by Rembrandt, correcting his portrayal of the shell as a mirror-image. Peachey told me that he thought some plates give us first-hand evidence of the rubbing out and re-engraving done as the final set of the plates evolved through its several editions created between 1685 and 1692. I suspect that these remarkable survivals will reveal much more to us about illustrations in natural history, book history, and the role of women in early science.

*Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the First Arachnologist (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

For the collection-level description of Martin Lister’s manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, see:
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/1500-1900/lister-m/lister-m.html

For the description of Martin Lister’s books now held in the Bodleian Library, see the entry under ‘Lister’ in:
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/library/specialcollections/catalogues/rare_books/rare_books_named_collections

The copperplates are kept in preservation envelopes and individual plates can be located using a handlist available from the Rare Books Section (e-mail rare.books[at]bodleian.ox.ac.uk)

See the Nature News story from 24 December 2010, about the copperplates, http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101224/full/news.2010.689.html

Literary manuscripts 2010: early modern women as poets and letter-writers

The fourth and final Literary Manuscripts Masterclass of the 2010 series was given on 22 November by Gillian Wright, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham. Dr. Wright, who has been previously associated with the Perdita Project to recover and digitise manuscript material associated with women writers in the Early Modern period, spoke on Bodleian MS. Add. A 119, a letter-book compiled by Mary Arthington, and Bodleian MS. Eng. poet. e. 31, a poetic miscellany compiled by Octavia Walsh.

Mary (Fairfax) Arthington (1616-1678) was a child of Ferdinando, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, and sister to the Parliamentarian general. Her letter-book consists chiefly of letters from siblings, including two from General Fairfax, two from Eleanor (Fairfax) Selby, fourteen from Dorothy (Fairfax) Hutton, and twenty-five from Frances (Fairfax) Widdrington. Also included are several letters between her parents.

Dr. Wright observed that the bulk of the letters preserved were of spiritual advice given within a domestic context and highlighted Frances Widdrington’s key role in giving her younger sister, Arthington, counsel on religious matters, even advising her and their other sisters on what Bible verses to read, while she was still a young woman. The nature of the letters was such, Dr. Wright suggested, as to make it likely that they were a selection from a larger corpus, preserved because of their perceived value as a source of advice and comfort. The letters from Frances Widdrington alone cover a period of over fifteen years but do not seem to represent a complete series of correspondence. The manuscript itself is written in a single hand and in slightly archaic spelling, though it is unclear whether the latter may not have been carried over from the letters themselves. Some of the individual letters are marked with an ‘S’ surmounted by three points or stars which Professor Kathryn Sutherland suggested might indicate Frances’s position as the third eldest sister in her family.

Turning to the second manuscript on display, Dr. Wright began by discussing Octavia Walsh (1677-1706), an aristocratic Worcestershire poet, and the printed extract from a 1928 bookseller’s catalogue present on the front paste-down of the manuscript. The catalogue comments somewhat censoriously on the presence of “ribald” poems in the manuscript and suggests that they were unlikely to be by Walsh herself. Dr. Wright used this as a springboard to discuss perceptions of women’s poetry in the period and afterwards and to probe deeper into the difficulties of attribution.

It is unclear if all the poems in the manuscript are, indeed, by Walsh and two of those present in the manuscript were published in The Grove, a 1721 poetic compilation, under the name of her brother, William Walsh, the mentor of Alexander Pope. Dr. Wright paid particular attention to the “ribald” poems of the catalogue entry. These included two poems on “Sacharissa”, the premise of both being that their eponymous heroine has left London to the sorrow of the young men, retiring to the country, allegedly to read Epictetus, but in truth to be adored by the rural swains.

Also discussed was “To Urania,” a scatological, Rabelaisian mock-epic.Dr. Wright noted that it was the only poem in the manuscript not included in another, posthumous, manuscript of Walsh’s poems (not in the Bodleian Library) which contains a notation on the flyleaf that the poems included there had been found amongst her papers at her death. The reason for its exclusion is uncertain, but was, perhaps, due to its bawdy content.

– from Kelsey Jackson Williams

Literary manuscripts 2010: ‘Poem, Amorous’: Two Bodleian Marvell Manuscripts

Bodleian Library MS. Eng. poet. d. 49, a hybrid consisting of a printed copy of Miscellaneous poems (London, 1681) with manuscript additions.

The third Literary Manuscript Masterclass of the year was given on 8 November by Diane Purkiss of Keble College and Johanna Harris of Lincoln College.  The subject: two Bodleian manuscripts containing poems by Andrew Marvell.

Dr. Purkiss introduced the first, Bodleian MS. Eng. poet. d. 49, a hybrid volume of 296 pages consisting of an exemplum of Marvell’s Miscellaneous Poems (London, 1681) with numerous manuscript emendations and notes in several hands.  It is a vital source for the recovery of Marvell’s political works, containing a unique variant of his “Horatian Ode”, one of only three copies of “The first Anniversary of the Government Under his Highness the Lord Protector”, and the sole complete text of “A Poem upon the Death of his late Highness the Lord Protector”.  Marvell was already deceased in 1681, so the emendations and manuscript poems contained in this text cannot be in his own handwriting,  but Dr. Purkiss noted that MS. Eng. poet. d. 49 was the source text for Edward Thompson’s 1776 edition of the poems, and had clearly been owned by Thompson. A note signed and dated (1775) by Thompson appears in the manuscript. Furthermore Thompson had advertised the acquisition of “a volume of Mr. Marvell’s poems” from the Popple family, descendants of Marvell’s nephew, William Popple, suggesting that both the emendations and the new or variant poems may have been added by William Popple himself. No surviving manuscript copies are known of poems in Marvell’s own hand.  This hybrid book is all the more important for containing in the manuscript section a number of satires,  political poems variously attributed to Marvell and his contemporaries.

Diane Purkiss writes:
Attributions of the political satires or “Painter poems” to Marvell have developed him as a satirist who reworked the work of others.  Annabel Patterson and Nigel Smith both suggest that the Second and the Third are in part by Marvell, a reworking of part of his earlier satiric and lyric canon, though Smith comments that ‘it is hard to believe that the inept ll. 175-6 or the unmetrical l.286 of the Second Advice could be Marvell’s’. Earlier manuscripts attribute these poems to Sir John Denham, an attribution noted, and dismissed, in Edward Thompson’s annotation in Eng. poet. d. 49.  At the masterclass, John Mc Tague from the Digital Miscellanies project noted that printed 18th-century poetical miscellanies continued the Denham attribution.

It may be that a further search of the elaborate layers of Painter-poem manuscripts might unearth some helpful clues.  Consider Samuel Pepys’ account of how he encountered them first as singles and then together.  Might it be helpful too to think about whether they were mostly transcribed in a group?  And whether either a scribal or printing error had been reproduced uncomprehendingly across the whole series of manuscripts, as Nigel Smith suggests may have happened with ‘To His Coy Mistress’?

It has been suggested that the smaller emendations of the printed text in MS.  Eng. poet. d. 49 are “common-sense” changes, but some present a more complex picture, for instance a change of “desarts” to “deserts” — implying a reference to the verb “desert” as well as the noun for a dry place.  The 1681 Poems reads a well-known crux in “To His Coy Mistress” as “Now therefore, while the youthful hue | Sits on thy skin like morning glew”, which the emendator of MS. Eng. poet. d. 49 has corrected to “. . . glew | . . . dew”.  Dr. Purkiss suggested that this may indicate a common origin with the other manuscript under discussion, Bodleian MS. Don b. 8.

Dr. Harris discussed MS. Don b. 8, a folio manuscript miscellany of 738 pages that includes thirteen poems in the Marvell canon.  It was compiled by Sir William Haward, a friend and fellow M.P. with Marvell.  Most notable amongst its contents is a unique variant of “To His Coy Mistress”, untitled, though Haward in his index to the miscellany has described it as a “Poeme, Amorous”.  It is 36 lines long rather than the canonical 46 and couched in the first person singular.

Significant variants also include “glew” | “dew” as in Eng. poet. d. 49 — though the two versions of the poem are otherwise radically different — and the more thought-provoking “‘Two hundred to adore your eyes | but thirty thousand for your thighs”.  The variants in this poem have been suggested as evidence of memorial reconstruction, but Dr. Harris also noted the insistence of some modern editors that a change of reference from  “breast” to “thighs” was indicative of an emergent homosexual culture in Restoration London — a suggestion not wholly adopted by the speakers.

Neither it nor the version given in Eng. poet. d. 49 have a clear relationship with the printed 1681 Poems and Dr. Harris questioned whether a lyrical poem can be singularly dated in this instance or whether the attributable canon must be elasticised to allow for a larger manuscript corpus of verse.  These questions were only some raised by the two manuscripts, which have yet to be fully understood.  As such, the class reinforced the point never too often made that even the texts of authors central to the canon are not always as stable and clear-cut as they may seem.

The instability of Eng. poet. d. 49 – Dr. Purkiss asked whether we should consider it an authorial text that became a miscellany — its deletions from the printed 1681 edition; its emendations and notes and manuscript additions, up to and including Edward Thompsons 1770s notes while preparing his edition — make it a fascinating crossroads for considering how the Marvell canon was developing in the century after his death.

— Kelsey Jackson Williams, Balliol College


Literary manuscripts 2010: Donne’s sermons and politics

At the second Literary Manuscripts Masterclass of 2010 on 25 October, Emma Rhatigan (University of Sheffield), Sebastiaan Verweij (Hardie Postdoctoral Fellow, Lincoln College), and Peter McCullough (University of Oxford, General Editor of the Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne ) presented manuscripts of John Donne’s sermons from Bodleian collections. Dr. McCullough, in his capacity as general editor of the sermons, introduced the class with an overview of the issues surrounding these manuscripts, discussing ways in which sermons were transmitted and identifying the principal manuscript sources for Donne’s, three of which, the Merton, Dowden, and Ashmole manuscripts, are held in the Bodleian. The editing and collation of sermons is still in its infancy, he observed, and much remains to be done. He pointed to the work of Jeanne Shami, who had discovered three new manuscripts in the British Library (Royal MS 17 B.xx, Harley 6946, and Harley 6356) containing a total of seven Donne sermons. He also speculated on the survival in manuscript of sermons dating from 1620 to 1622 but no later and suggested that Donne’s promotion to St. Paul’s and the promulgation of James I’s ‘directions for preachers’, both in 1622, may have played a role in reducing manuscript circulation.

Following Dr. McCullough’s introduction, Drs. Verweij and Rhatigan talked the audience through the items at hand. Those examined were the ‘Dowden’ manuscript (Bodleian Library MS. Eng. Th. e. 102, Summary Catalogue 46602), which includes 8 sermons by Donne, as well as other material, the ‘Merton’ manuscript (Bodleian Library MS. Eng. Th. c. 71, Summary Catalogue 46601), including 16 sermons by Donne, as well as other material, and MS. Ashmole 781, a commonplace book of over 100 items, with one Donne sermon. This last is in an advanced state of decay, due to acidic ink, and is now disbound for preservation purposes. The first item in the Ashmole manuscript, discussed by Dr. Verweij, is Donne’s sermon on the text, ‘Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth’ (Ecclesiastes 12.1; pp. 1-19). None of the three manuscripts are in Donne’s own hand but are copies made for other interested parties.

In the first lecture in this series Professor Henry Woudhuysen cited the field-defining work of Peter Beal, author of the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts. Dr. Beal’s contribution to Early Modern manuscript studies was confirmed in Dr. Rhatigan’s discussion of the ‘Merton’ manuscript. The distinctive gold-tooled lozenge on its front board, incorporating the initials ‘H.F.’, has been identified by Beal as the mark of one Henry Field, a still mysterious individual, perhaps a relative of Theophilus Field, Bishop of Hereford. Dr. Rhatigan’s own work emphasized the importance of such identifications in studying the creation and use of the ‘Merton’ manuscript and discussed the interrelationships of its contents within the context of Jacobean theological politics.

Donne’s work circulated extensively in manuscripts copied by friends and readers, even after print publication. These manuscripts of sermons represent only a portion of the Bodleian’s Donne collections. Also of note is Bodleian Library MS. Eng. poet. d. 197 (Summary Catalogue 46444), ‘A letter to the Lady Carey and Mrs. Essex Riche’. This verse epistle (the creases in the paper suggest that it was indeed folded and delivered as a private letter) is the only known manuscript of an English poem by Donne written in his own hand.

– Kelsey Jackson Williams
Balliol College


Contents of the ‘Merton’ Manuscript, Bodleian Library MS. Eng. th. c. 71

Medieval Islamic maps of the world

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These are some of the painted maps illustrating two manuscripts of Muhammad al-Idrisi’s Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq, a description of the known world from the latitude of the Equator to the Baltic Sea. The work was composed in the 12th century, and the earlier of the Bodleian manuscripts, MS. Greaves 42, was made in the 14th or 15th century. This is a partial manuscript, containing the first three of seven ‘climates’ described by al-Idrisi. The later one, MS. Pococke 375, was made in the 1550s and contains descriptions and maps of all seven climates.

All of the maps from the two manuscripts, MS. Greaves 42 and MS. Pococke 375, are available to view in the Bodleian’s image library, at Masterpieces of the non-Western book. Search ‘al-Idrisi’ to find them all.

Remember, these maps are drawn facing south — upside-down from the modern orientation.

Literary manuscripts 2010: finding Arcadia in the gutter

Manuscripts of Sir Philip Sidney’s works provided the opportunity for Professor Henry Woudhuysen (University College London) to deliver a master class in techniques for the study of early modern manuscripts. These include the recognition (if not identification) of different hands in a manuscript; consideration of the binding date and style; archaeology of the manuscript taking note of the gatherings or quires; and identification of the paper stock from watermark evidence.

For MS. Bod. e. mus. [museao] 37, Professor Woudhuysen asked students to look into the gutter, where pages meet at the spine of the book, to find stitching in the centre of gatherings. He demonstrated the importance of understanding the quire structure (as shown in the attached document detailing the structure of signature ‘O’) for detecting missing pages.

This manuscript of Sidney’s Arcadia, with ‘Certain loose sonnets & songs’, was written in at least three different hands, but a tantalizing clue is left by the scribe who signed the last written page with a flourish and his initials.

Half of a watermark (the royal coat of arms) seen in MS. Jesus College 150, with the aid of a fibre-optic light sheet.

Seeking the origin of MS. Jesus College 150, also a manuscript of Arcadia, Professor Woudhuysen looked for evidence at the watermark of the paper. This displayed a royal coat of arms, suggesting that this paper was made by the firm of John Spilman of Dartford in Kent. Spilman gained a patent from Elizabeth I in 1589, enabling him to monopolize the manufacture of high-quality white paper in the 1590s and first decade of the 17th century, and make this for the first time a profitable industry in England. On the study and use of watermark evidence, Woudhuysen cited the authority of Allan H. Stevenson, whose article ‘Watermarks are twins’ is linked here.

While these methodologies of manuscript studies are necessary tools for the scholar, Woudhuysen argued that they should not replace, but supplement, textual analysis. Following a period of intense academic interest in the material forms of both manuscript and printed texts, in pursuit of a history of scribal and print culture (defining the field of History of the Book), Professor Woudhuysen predicted that we will see a return to textual criticism, with the aim of establishing the best text. Techniques helping to date the manuscript witnesses, or place them within a stemma of the text, will continue to be valuable in this scholarly work.

Thomas Churchyard, A sparke of frendship and warme goodwill, that shewest the effect of true affection and vnfoldes the finenesse of this world VVhereunto is ioined, the commoditie of sundrie sciences, the benefit that paper bringeth, with many rare matters rehearsed in the same ... (London, 1588)

Script and print
Many of the techniques demonstrated in the examination of these manuscripts could be applied to printed books of the same period. Just as scribes had their personal styles (and foibles), so did type compositors; watermark evidence can be found by the same means; the format, gatherings, and binding repay examination in determining the intentions behind the manufacture of any book, whether in manuscript or print.

A future for handwriting analysis?
The regularity of the taught ‘secretary’ handwriting was its virtue for the 16th-century reader, but operates against modern scholars who try to find distinctive personal handwriting styles. Digital photography has the potential to enable scholars to build up a visual databank of handwriting samples.

Reading list for this session: page 1 — page 2

The Literary Manuscripts masterclasses take place on Monday afternoons in Michaelmas term. See the Centre for the Study of the Book calendar for details.

Bodleian maps move to Duke Humfrey’s Library

The Bodleian Library’s Map Room re-opened in its new premises on Monday 20 September in the wonderfully atmospheric Duke Humfrey’s Library. Maps occupies the northern wing of the new-look Selden End, and boasts two splendid new map tables crafted by carpenters from the University’s Estates Department. A partitioned off area has also been created for digital mapping. Selden End’s open shelves have been filled with Maps content transferred from the New Bodleian Reading Room. Additional staff invigilation points have been created within Selden End, so there should always be specialist staff on hand. Individual phone numbers remain unaltered within the Maps section, but the direct number for the reading room is now 01865 287300. A number of Maps staff have already relocated to Duke Humfrey’s Library, with the remainder staying in the office in the New Bodleian for the time being.

One member of the staff team was particularly delighted when the first new map to be added to the collection arrived in Duke Humfrey; it was the latest 1:25,000-scale Ordnance Survey Explorer map for Manchester and Salford. Our first cartographic enquiry required the use of 1970s Soviet-produced maps of the United Arab Emirates. These were used by colleagues from the Pitt Rivers Museum to identify the locations of wells referred to by William Thesiger in his travel diaries.

On their first visit to the new facility, a regular Map Room reader was heard to comment: “And lo let there be light, and there was light”.

This move has been necessitated as part of the programme for the refurbishment of the New Bodleian, which is planned to re-open as the Weston Library in 2014.

— from Nick Millea

William Godwin’s diaries examined

Any document connected with William Godwin – political philosopher, writer for children, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, father of Mary Shelley, thus (literarily) grandfather of Frankenstein’s monster – is of interest to literary scholars because of his career and associations. Fortunately for scholars, Godwin kept a diary for the last 48 years of his life from 1788 to 1836, recording brief details of his meetings with people and books. These records have now been digitized and transcribed in a Leverhulme-funded project and a conference on July 23-24 presented evidence of the scholarly potential of this work for a range of disciplines, including literary studies, history, theatre studies, political thought and statistics.

These notebooks recorded the simple facts of Godwin’s daily social and intellectual life. We find in them the names of people Godwin met at dinner and tea, so it’s possible to map a web of relationships among writers, politicians, artists, and publishers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The diaries are part of the Abinger Collection of manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, relating to Godwin and the Shelleys. (Shelfmarks of the diaries are Bodleian Library MSS. Abinger e. 1-32).

MS. Abinger e. 8, fols. 25v26r_detail
Detail from Godwin’s diary of 1797, recording the birth of his daughter Mary (later Mary Shelley). Bodleian MS. Abinger e.8.

Of special interest to book historians, the entries, each only a few lines long, collectively give valuable quantitative evidence over several decades of activity in writing, reading, and publishing: Godwin’s records of his visits to booksellers, his notes of books read, and the progress in his own writing are recorded daily. In speaking about the diaries, Beth Lau drew out details of Godwin’s connections with the ‘Cockney’ publishing circles around Hazlitt, Lamb, and Keats, and the connection of this activity – as an unofficial literary agent – with his daily reading. Matthew Grenby offered insights into how Godwin became first a writer and later a seller of children’s books, even before the foundation in 1805 of the Juvenile Library as a business venture. David Fallon was able to graph Godwin’s visits to London booksellers of different political leanings as an indicator of his own changing political ambitions.

The project to digitize and transcribe the diaries has been run by David O’Shaughnessy and Mark Philp (Oxford) and Victoria Myers (California). See:
Godwin Diaries Project page

http://godwindiary.politics.ox.ac.uk/

Collection-level description of the Abinger Collection, Bodleian Library

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/1500-1900/abinger/abinger.html

And see ‘A conspectus…’ for brief descriptions of individual items, including the diaries.

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/1500-1900/abinger/conspectus.html

Laxton map and terrier

On Saturday 12 June, the Bodleian Library cricket team and a group of Library spectators travelled to Laxton, Nottinghamshire, as guests of the Laxton History Group.

Bodleian Library MS. C17:48 (9): A plat and description of the whole mannor & Lordship of Laxton.

For over sixty years the Bodleian has had in its possession the manuscript map made in 1635 by Mark Pierce of the village of Laxton showing the layout of the open field system surrounding the village, and its accompanying terrier, describing each of the thousands strips of land and the identity of their occupying tenants:
http://www2.odl.ox.ac.uk/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?site=localhost&a=p&p=about&c=mapsxx01&ct=0&l=en&w=iso-8859-1

In 2010, much of the three-field system remains in place, as do the individual strips so clearly demarcated on Pierce’s map. In recent years, the Library has forged close links with the Laxton History Group, whose members travel to Oxford on an annual basis to view both the map and the book. In 2008 the Laxton visitors invited a group of librarians to the village, and suggested a cricket match, an invitation the Library was enthusiatically able to accept.

The day was not just about the cricket. Library staff were treated to some generous hospitality. First a talk and walking tour through the village, followed by a stroll up to the site of Laxton’s motte and bailey castle, from where we were afforded views of the open field system still in place. Then came a visit to the church, with its copy of the map on the nave wall. At the church, the Oxford contingent were able to feed something back to our hosts by offering expert knowledge concerning some of the finer details inside the building, and identifying gravestones in the churchyard, which had long baffled local historians. We continued to the pub for a lunch and general chat between people from the village and the Library, followed by the game itself, won by the Library team with two balls to spare.

After the game, one last treat involved a tea laid on at the village hall with both teams and a large number of villagers in attendance as well, giving everyone a chance to mingle and converse about our common link. For Library staff, this was a chance to place two of the collection’s key manuscripts into their natural environment, and for the people of Laxton, here was an opportunity to learn how both map and terrier have become part of the fabric of the University, both in terms of how the material is preserved, but also how it is incorporated into Oxford’s teaching activities.

18th-century letters and a family’s literary flowers

The Bodleian Library’s collection of papers from the Harcourt family (Earls of Harcourt) have been the subject of research by Carly Watson, this year’s Balliol-Bodley Scholar. On 18 June at the Bodleian Library Watson described her work listing hundreds of poems in manuscript that were collected by George Simon, 2nd earl Harcourt (1736-1809), and his wife Elizabeth Vernon.

Watson has been noting the poems found in the letters from friends of the earl and countess, along with several hundred in manuscript by the Countess herself. Other poems were copied down from newspapers of the day, indicating that the Harcourts kept an eye on how current events were memorialized in verse, and circulated choice examples with their friends. The Harcourt papers supply the library with many new poems not already found in Margaret Crum’s First-line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library Oxford. Watson’s additions will be recorded in the card-index supplement, kept in Duke Humfrey’s Library.

For the Harcourts, their house and garden both inspired and reflected their literary lives. During the landscaping by William Mason and Capability Brown, in the 1770s, the gardens were given urns, seats and statues inscribed with commemorative verses and inviting poetic reflections. The result was a rich correspondence including manuscript copies of poems, some of them written in the garden, circulating between the Harcourts and their friends. As Curator of Manuscripts Chris Fletcher remarked, this represents a long British tradition of literary gardens.

An online catalogue of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century correspondence in the Harcourt family papers will be available from the library website later this year.